Long jumper Greg Rutherford, whose girlfriend is a friend of Mr Poole’s, shared a picture of the text exchange on Twitter yesterday, and it quickly sparked outrage and was retweeted thousands of times.

It is illegal for a landlord to refuse to rent premises to someone because of their sexual orientation under the Equality Act 2010.

George and Matthew (above) are said to be very pleased by all of the supportive responses that they have received via Twitter.

It’s a shame that even today a gay couple are being bracketed as “irregular” by some people. Let’s be honest, George and Matthew probably don’t want to live with people like this anyway.